Wow! I read a paper a while back that suggested the brain cortex is modular, and each module is constantly+independently comparing sensory input to expectation

Wow! I read a paper a while back that suggested the brain cortex is modular, and each module is constantly+independently comparing sensory input to expectations (arxiv.org/pdf/1810.09084.pdf). From personal experience, when there's a lot of stimuli competing for my attention, most of it gets ignored or handled subconsciously. The flow of consciousness has fuzzy boundaries.